Editor’s note for Friday, October 1, 2021

Dear reader,

Today is National Day in China and the beginning of a week-long holiday. But people in charge of electricity generation will not have a rest as power cuts continue to affect factories and residential areas.

Bloomberg says that “China’s central government officials ordered the country’s top state-owned energy companies — from coal to electricity and oil — to secure supplies for this winter at all costs.” The priority, according to one senior official, is to ensure residential users get their juice.

Coming up on Monday: It’s been over eight months since Joe Biden became president of the United States, but he has barely touched Trump’s tariffs and China policies.

That looks set to change on October 4 when U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai “will unveil the Biden administration’s long-awaited strategy for the troubled U.S.-China trade relationship in a speech on Monday at a Washington think tank,” per Reuters.

Other breaking stories from China today that we haven’t covered below:

• A top cop is going down for corruption: Sūn Lìjūn 孙力军, a former vice minister of public security, has been relieved of his job, ejected from the Communist Party, and is under investigation. The Wall Street Journal notes that he appears to have some kind of connection to internet giant Tencent.
• Graft investigators have another catch: A corrupt Beijing housing official was found to have $2 million in cash in his apartment. “The man said he didn’t know how much he took and was surprised by the total,” reports Caixin.

Out word of the day is to be dismissed from your job and ejected from the Communist Party (被双开 bèi shuāngkāi, literally “double removal”).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief